The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of an apparatus for guiding a weft or filling thread in a shed of a weaving machine, the weft thread being driven by a flowing fluid medium.
Generally speaking, the apparatus of the present development is of the type comprising two lamellae combs formed of lamellae or other equivalent guide elements and which can dip into and out of the warp threads. The plate-like guide or lamellae elements of the lamellae combs each possess a throughpass opening for guiding the weft thread and a thread exit or outlet opening. In their effective or operative position, where such lamellae completely dip or immerse into the shed, such lamellae are interleaved or pushed into one another and form, by means of their throughpass openings, a coherent or continuous guide channel for the weft threads in the weft insertion direction.
With a prior art apparatus of the aforementioned type, as has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,557,845, granted Jan. 26, 1971, the thread exit or outlet openings, the so-called thread-out or dethreading slots, at each lamellae comb are arranged at a different portion of the circumference of the throughpass openings, so that in the effective or operative position of the lamellae combs each thread-out slot of a lamella merges, in the weft insertion direction, at a solid wall portion of the immediately neighboring lamellae. In this way there should be prevented, among other things, that the weft threads, during their insertion, will be laterally blown out of the thread-out slots and remain caught at the warp threads. This objective could be partially achieved, but it was not possible to completely maintain under control the weft insertion since it was found that from time to time weft threads became caught at the lamellae combs.